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VAV Box Selection

3. For all except very noise sensitive applications, select VAV boxes for a
total (static plus velocity) pressure drop of 0.5 H2O. For most
applications, this provides the optimum energy balance (see the section
below, Sizing VAV Reheat Boxes).

VAV Reheat Box Control

Common Practice (Single Maximum)
Common practice in VAV box control is to use the control logic depicted in
Figure 21. In cooling, airflow to the zone is modulated between a minimum
airflow setpoint and the design cooling maximum airflow setpoint based on
the space cooling demand. In heating, the airflow is fixed at the minimum
rate and only the reheat source (hot water or electric heater) is modulated.
The VAV box minimum airflow setpoint is kept relatively high, typically
between 30% and 50% of the cooling maximum airflow setpoint (see Code
Limitations).
Advocates of this approach argue that it:
Insures high ventilation rates.
Provides adequate space heating capacity.
Prevents short circuiting due to stratification in heating mode by keeping
supply air temperature relatively low (e.g., less than 90F).
Prevents dumping by keeping air outlet velocities from getting too low.
Works for all box direct digital controller manufacturers and control
types (i.e., pneumatic, analog electronic or digital).

Cooling
Max

Reheat Valve Position

Supply CFM
Minimum
Airflow Setpoint

Shaded Area =
Reheat Energy

Heating Loop Signal

Deadband

Cooling Loop Signal

Figure 21. VAV Hot Water Reheat Box Control - Single Maximum

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Recommended Approach (Dual Maximum)

A more energy efficient VAV box control logic is the dual maximum strategy
depicted in Figure 22. In addition to a minimum airflow setpoint and a
cooling maximum airflow setpoint, there is also a heating maximum airflow
setpoint; hence the name dual maximum. The heating maximum airflow
setpoint is generally equal to the minimum airflow setpoint in the
conventional approach described above; in both cases they would be
determined based on meeting heating load requirements. That allows the
minimum airflow setpoint to be much lower (see Minimum airflow
setpoints).
The control logic of the dual maximum approach is described by the following
sequence of operation:
1. When the zone is in the cooling mode, the cooling loop output is mapped
to the airflow setpoint from the cooling maximum to the minimum airflow
setpoints. The hot water valve is closed.
2. When the zone is in the deadband mode, the airflow setpoint shall be the
minimum airflow setpoint. The hot water valve is closed.
3. When the zone is in the heating mode, the heating loop shall maintain
space temperature at the heating setpoint as follows:
a. From 0%-50% loop signal, the heating loop output shall reset the
discharge temperature from supply air temperature setpoint (e.g.,
55F) to 90F. Note the upper temperature is limited to prevent
stratification during heating.
b. From 50%-100% loop signal, the heating loop output shall reset the
zone airflow setpoint from the minimum airflow setpoint to the
maximum heating airflow setpoint. The supply air discharge
temperature remains at 90F.
4. The hot water valve shall be modulated using a PI control loop to
maintain the discharge temperature at setpoint. Note that directly
controlling the hot water valve from the zone temperature PI loop is not
acceptable since it will not allow supply air temperature to be under
control and limited in temperature to prevent stratification.
5. The VAV damper shall be modulated to maintain the measured airflow at
setpoint.

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Cooling Max
Supply Air Temperature Setpoint

Heating
Max

Supply CFM

Minimum Airflow Setpoint

Shaded Area =
Reheat Energy
Heating Loop Signal

Deadband

Cooling Loop Signal

Figure 22. VAV Hot Water Reheat Box Dual Maximum

While the hatched area (which is proportional to the magnitude of the reheat
energy) in
Figure 21 and Figure 22 may not appear to be very different, the difference
can be quite significant on an annual basis since VAV boxes typically spend
much of their time in the deadband and mild heating modes. For example,
suppose a zone has a cooling design maximum of 1.5 CFM/ft2. With a single
maximum VAV box control and a 30% minimum, 0.45 CFM/ft2 would be
supplied in deadband. With a dual maximum VAV box control and a properly
selected minimum (see Minimum airflow setpoints), this rate could drop to
about 0.15 CFM/ft2. In this case, the single maximum results in three times
more airflow and three times more reheat energy than the dual maximum
approach in all but the coldest weather.
The arguments supporting the dual maximum approach include:
It allows for much lower airflow rates in the deadband and first stage of
heating while still maintaining code ventilation requirements. This
reduces both reheat energy and fan energy.
By reducing the deadband minimum airflow rate, spaces are not overcooled when there is no cooling load and pushed into the heating mode.

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By controlling the reheat valve to maintain discharge supply temperature

rather than space temperature, supply air temperature can be limited so
that stratification and short circuiting of supply to return does not occur.
This improves heating performance and ventilation effectiveness (see
Figure 22). It also keeps the HW valve under control at all times, even
during transients such as warm-up. With two-way valves, this makes the
system completely self-balancing, obviating the need for balancing valves
and associated labor. (See also Taylor, S.T. Balancing Variable Flow
Hydronic Systems, " ASHRAE Journal, October 2002.)24
Disadvantages include:
Only a few direct digital control manufacturers that have burned-in
programming in their controllers (often called preprogrammed
configurable controllers) offer dual maximum logic as a standard option.
However, there are many fully programmable zone controllers on the
market and all of them can be programmed to use this logic.
There is a greater airflow turndown and potential risk of dumping and
poor air distribution with improperly selected diffusers. See Minimum
airflow setpoints.
While ventilation codes are met, airflow rates are reduced which results
in higher (although acceptable) concentrations of indoor contaminants.

Minimum airflow setpoints

Code Limitations
Title 24 places limits on both the lowest and highest allowable VAV box
minimum airflow setpoints.
The lowest allowable setpoints are those required to meet ventilation
requirements (see Code Ventilation Requirements). Note that since Title 24
allows air transferred or returned from other ventilated spaces to be used for
ventilation, the minimum airflow setpoint need not be adjusted for the
fraction of fresh air that is in the supply air. In other words, if the
minimum ventilation rate is 0.15 cfm/ft2, then the minimum airflow setpoint
may be set to that value even if the supply air is not 100% outdoor air,
provided the design minimum outdoor air at the air handler is delivered to
some other spaces served by the system (again, see Code Ventilation
Requirements).
Title 24 Section 144 limits the highest allowable minimum airflow setpoints
in order to minimize reheat energy. In Section 144, the minimum setpoint is
mandated to be no greater than the largest of the following:
1. 30% of the peak supply volume; or

24

In a traditional control sequence, the maximum call for heating would open up the heating valve fully. During
warm-up, the coils closest to the pump would likely take more than their design share of the hot water flow,
partially starving the coils furthest from the pump. By controlling leaving air temperature instead of valve
position each reheat coil is limited to its design flow.

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2. The minimum required to meet the ventilation requirements of Section

121; or
3. 0.4 cubic feet per minute (cfm) per square foot of conditioned floor area of
the zone; or
4. 300 cfm.
In common practice, VAV box minimums are set much higher than even this
code limit, and much higher than they need to be. In the buildings surveyed
for this document, the box minimums ranged between 30% and 50% of design
airflow (see Table 12). Unfortunately, this common practice significantly
increases reheat fan, and cooling energy usage.
Table 12. VAV Box Minimums from Five Measured Sites
Site

Average

#1

No data

Type

#2

28% +/- 19%

#3

30%

VAV interior with parallel fan-powered boxes with electric reheat

#4

50%

VAV reheat with single maximum

#5

40%

VAV reheat with single maximum

VAV reheat with dual maximums

With the dual maximum strategy (see Recommended Approach (Dual

Maximum)), the minimum airflow setpoint need not be based on peak
heating requirements. To minimize energy usage while still complying with
Title 24 ventilation requirements, the minimum airflow setpoint should be
set to the greater of:
1. The minimum airflow at which the box can stably control the flow (see
Determining the Box Minimum Airflow); and
2. Ventilation requirement (see Code Ventilation Requirements).
Although the dual maximum strategy saves energy, meets the Title 24
Section 144 requirements and maintains code required ventilation, some
engineers remain concerned about the following issues:
Minimum air movement and stuffiness
Diffuser dumping and poor distribution problems
Air change effectiveness
These concerns are largely anecdotal and unsupported by research, as shown
in the following paragraphs.
M in imu m A ir M o v em e nt a n d St u ff in e ss
ASHRAE Standard 55-1992 states clearly that there is no minimum air
speed necessary for thermal comfort if the other factors that affect comfort
(drybulb temperature, humidity, mean radiant temperature, radiant and
thermal asymmetry, clothing level, activity level, etc.) are within comfort
ranges. People routinely experience this at home: they can be perfectly
comfortable with no air movement (windows closed, furnace and AC unit off)
yet for some reason many HVAC engineers insist that these same people
need air movement at work. They use this to justify higher minimum airflow
setpoints (e.g., 0.4 CFM/ft2, the maximum allowed by Title 24).

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There are virtually no studies that support this perception, however. Even if
perceptible air motion was associated with comfort, higher airflow rates out
of a given diffuser are unlikely to increase perceived air velocities in the
occupied region simply because the velocities are below perceptible levels
even at full airflow by design ; that is, after all, what diffusers are designed
and selected to do.
Simply put, studies to date show fairly conclusively that complaints of
stuffiness and poor air motion are not due to lack of air movement but
instead indicate that spaces are too warm. Lower the thermostat (e.g., to
<72F) and the complaints almost always go away.
D u m p i ng a nd P o o r D i s t r i b u t i o n
Another concern when using a relatively low box minimum is degradation of
diffuser performance. There are two potential issues with low minimums:
stratification and short-circuiting in heating mode (see discussion of air
change effectiveness) and dumping in cooling mode. A diffuser designed for
good mixing at design cooling conditions may dump at low flow. Dumping
means that the air leaving the diffuser does not have sufficient velocity to
hug the ceiling (the so-called Coanda effect) and mix with the room air before
reaching the occupied portion of the room. Instead, a jet of cold air descends
into the occupied space creating draft and cold temperatures which in turn
creates discomfort. The industry quantifies diffuser performance with the
Air Diffusion Performance Index (ADPI). Maintaining nearly uniform
temperatures and low air velocities in a space results in an ADPI of 100. An
ADPI of 70 to 80 is considered acceptable. The ASHRAE Handbook of
Fundamentals gives ranges of T50/L for various diffuser types that result in
various ADPI goals. L is the characteristic room length (e.g., distance from
the outlet to the wall or mid-plane between outlets) and T50 is the 50 FPM
throw, the distance from the outlet at which the supply air velocity drops to
50 feet per minute. For a perforated ceiling diffuser, the Handbook indicates
that acceptable ADPI will result when T50/L ranges from 1.0 to 3.4. This
basically means that best turndown possible while still maintaining an
acceptable ADPI is 1/3.4 = 30% turndown. Other types of diffusers have
greater turndown. A light troffer diffuser, for example, can turndown almost
to zero and still maintain acceptable ADPI.
Note that ADPI tests are always done under a cooling load. For all diffuser
types, the lower the load, the greater the turn-down percentage while still
maintaining acceptable ADPI. The lowest load catalogued in the ASHRAE
Handbook of Fundamentals is 20 Btu/h/ft2, equal to roughly 1 cfm/ft2 which is
a fairly high load, well above that required for interior zones and even well
shaded or north-facing perimeter zones. To achieve good air distribution
when the load is substantial, maintaining diffuser throw is important.
However, when the low airflow rates occur with the dual maximum strategy,
loads are by definition very low or zero. Under these conditions, acceptable
ADPI may occur with even zero airflow. Again, consider experiences in the
home: temperatures around the home can be very uniform with no air
circulation when AC and heating equipment is off at low or no loads.
Concern about dumping may be overblown (no pun intended). There are
many buildings operating comfortably with lower than 30% airflow
minimums. Researchers at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory performed several laboratory experiments with two types of
perforated diffusers and two types of linear slot diffusers (Fisk, 1997;
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Bauman, 1995). They measured air change effectiveness (using tracer gas)
and thermal comfort (using thermal mannequins) in heating and cooling
mode and at various flow rates (100%, 50%, and 25% turndown). They also
measured throw and space temperature and velocity distribution from which
they calculated ADPI. They found that in cooling mode ADPI depended more
on the diffuser type than the flow rate. For example, the least expensive
perforated diffuser had an ADPI of 81 at 25% flow. They also found that in
nearly all cooling tests thermal comfort was within the acceptable range and
air change effectiveness was consistently at or above 1.0.
A i r C h ang e E f f e c t i v e ness
Air change effectiveness measures the ability of an air distribution system to
deliver ventilation air to the occupied (breathing) zone of a space. A value of
1.0 indicates perfect mixing; the concentration of pollutants is nearly
uniform. A value under 1.0 implies some short-circuiting of supply air to the
return. Values greater than 1.0 are possible with displacement ventilation
systems where the concentration of pollutants in the breathing zone is less
than that at the return. Studies have shown that air change effectiveness is
primarily a function of supply air temperature, not diffuser design or airflow
rates. Measurements by all major research to-date (e.g. Persily and Dols
1991, Persily 1992, Offerman and Int-Hout, 1989) indicate that air change
effectiveness is around 1.0 for virtually all ceiling supply/return applications
when supply air temperature is lower than room temperature. Bauman et al
1993 concluded that a ceiling mounted supply and return air distribution
system supplying air over the range 0.2 to 1.0 cfm/ft2 [1.0 to 5.0 L/s.m2] was
able to provide uniform ventilation rates into partitioned work stations. The
range of tested supply volumes represented rates that were below and above
the [diffuser] manufacturers minimum levels for acceptable performance.
Fisk et al 1995 concluded that when the supply air was cooled, the [air
change effectiveness] ranged from 0.99 to 1.15, adding to existing evidence
that short-circuiting is rarely a problem when the building is being cooled.
This study was based on air flow rates ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 cfm/ft2 (1.0 to
2.5 L/s.m2) using linear slot diffusers as well as two types of inexpensive
perforated diffusers.
These studies indicate that low air change effectiveness is only an issue in
heating mode; the higher the supply air temperature above the space
temperature, the lower the air change effectiveness. This suggests that the
low minimum airflow setpoints we propose will result in lower air change
effectiveness for a given heating load since the supply air temperature must
be higher. But air change effectiveness will stay around 1.0 if the supply air
temperature is no higher than about 85F25. With the dual maximum
approach with the hot water valve controlled to maintain supply air
temperature (rather than directly from room temperature), the supply air
temperature can be limited below 85F, thus mitigating or even eliminating
this problem. Note that some zones may require higher supply air
temperatures to meet peak heating load requirements. If so, the problem will
be the same for both the dual maximum and conventional single maximum
approach since at peak heating (the far left side of the control diagram), both
have the same airflow setpoint. For these spaces, fan-powered mixing boxes
can be used to increase heating airflow rates while at the same time limiting

25

See ASHRAE Standard 62, Addendum 62n, Table 6.2. 85F limit assumes 70F space temperature (15F !T).

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